Holistic Financial Advisors
Your partners on the path to financial wellness
Our experience in financial services gives us a broad background in personal finance issues, and we are able to work on almost anything related to personal finance. We view ourselves as holistic financial wellness counselors and are happy to work with you on whatever basis you prefer (more details below). Services include:
Ongoing relationships are our most common way of working with clients. We prefer to be your partner, your coach, and your co-pilot – we can be as involved in your finances as you want us to be, while keeping you in the driver’s seat. We’re extremely flexible, and happy to build a plan that fits your needs, with the tools to give you a total picture of your finances, whether that means a subscription plan for our financial planning work, a fee-for-service investment account, or an alternative arrangement. Our goal is to get the job done for you, not get rich from collecting fees!
Because people often come to us ‘hurting’ from the issues associated with these subjects, and in order to avoid making the problems that bring you to us worse, we have developed two ways for us to work together: Ongoing Relationships and One Time Engagements. One Time Engagements use our hourly rate for our counseling using a sliding scale to set our fee based on your income and ability to pay (see below). This method is best for clients who need our services for a single engagement, or to solve a limited set of issues that don’t require a financial product to solve, just our advice. Services include:
Budgeting • Cash Flow • Debt • Credit • College Funding • Student Loans• Home buying • Marriage & Divorce • Retirement • Insurance • Investment Strategy• Estate Planning • LGBTQIA+ Issues • And more.
Wealth Management
You have assets to manage, and don’t want to do it yourself. We generally provide these services on a fee-for-service basis. In addition to our other services, we build, monitor, re-balance and keep current a set of investment portfolios designed to meet our clients’ goals and tolerance for risk, as well as highlight any thematic investments they want to hold.
Our management fee then covers all of our clients’ financial planning needs as well, and gives you access to our client portal, which gives you a total picture of your finances in one convenient and secure place.
Family Life Coaches
These clients have different needs and means. You may not have assets to manage yet, but you want to build wealth and need guidance to stay on track and meet your goals. With our suite of professional cash flow management and goals based financial planning tools, you will also get our advice and coaching. We’ll be there with you to make the big decisions in life, and provide analysis and support so you can see the impact that decisions could have on your financial plan. Link your checking accounts, credit cards, mortgages, retirement plans and more into our client portal, where we can help you set a budget, get a handle on your spending, optimize and get (and stay) on track.
You will also gain access to our low-cost, no-minimum investment platform, which is designed specifically for clients who are making regular contributions to their account – with no commissions generated. Take it for a spin yourself here!
One Time Engagements
We’re committed to being a “no-minimum” firm, so we’ve developed this fee schedule to enable us to cover our overhead while still helping those who need our assistance, and because we never want you to feel like we have to sell a product to get paid. We view financial products as potential solutions to whatever brings you in the door. If a financial product is a suitable solution for your needs, and we earn a commission as a result of our work together, our fee is waived. We also have no minimums on our investment work, and this can, depending on the size of your accounts with us, waive our fee as well. We’d be happy to discuss this further, just click the link on the bottom right corner of this page to schedule an appointment!
Fee Schedule
Income Hourly Fee*
$ 45,000 $ 75.00
$ 60,000 $ 100.00
$ 100,000 $ 125.00
(*Note: We reserve the right to determine the length of the hour. All hours start at 60 minutes, but we adopt Einstein’s’ theory that time is relative and some hours can actually be longer than others)
However you choose to work with us, our practice covers these areas:
Financial Planning
Make a plan and stick to it
Budgeting & Cash Flow, strategies to save, pay off debt efficiently, and set SMART goals that you can achieve.
We also function as “Financial Quarterbacks”, working with the rest of your team: Accountants, Attorneys, and other professionals.
Investment Management
Monitoring and Re-balancing your portfolio
Our team watches your portfolio and takes action when necessary to keep your investments in line with your objectives.
We also customize your portfolio to your values (if you want). Read more about our SRI Investing approach here.
Student Loan Counseling
Pre-and-Post College
Whether considering taking out student loans, or paying back your loans, we can help understand and optimize your student loans. Are you on the right Repayment Plan? Do you qualify for Student Loan Forgiveness? Paying more than the minimum payment on your loans but the balance isn’t going down? We can help.
Retirement Planning
Strategies for Retirement Income Planning
Plan your transition from making money and saving to taking income from your investments. Which accounts do you draw from and in which order? How do Social Security, Medicare, and your retirement plan fit together? We put the pieces in place before you retire and prepare you for what’s coming.
Estate Planning
Managing your Legacy and what’s left behind
When you are gone, what do you want your money to mean? What impact do you want it to have, and how do you want to be remembered? Future generations depend on the decisions we make today, and we can help you make the decisions that are right for you. No two people have the same answers to these questions, and we function as a guide through the process.
Career Coaching
Take your Career to the next level
We invest in our clients so that they can invest with us. We want our clients to be fulfilled and happy, moving towards their goals with a support structure behind them. To support this, we’re always available to work on your resume, talk about your next career move, and be an outside, objective point of view to help you think through big decisions.
Protection Solutions
Understand & Manage Risk
Are you properly insured? How does your insurance package fit your overall financial life? We’ll review your insurance policies to see if your protection is appropriate and meeting your needs. Especially important if you don’t understand what you own.
Philanthropy
Streamline your Charitable Giving
What causes do you want to support? How much good is your charitable donation doing? Are you getting tax advantages from your charitable donations and could they be done in a more efficient way? These are the questions we can answer together.
Health Care Planning
Manage the risks and costs of long term health care needs
An important subset of protection planning, Long Term Health Care is one of the biggest risks to any retirement plan. Whether you’re going to self-insure, you own insurance that you’re not sure is working for you, or you want to explore your options, we can help.
We are very proud of the holistic nature of our work, and have created a Cadre of Allied Professionals in order to fully meet our mantra of “Empowering Financial Wellness.” We are driven to make sure our clients and their families have their entire financial houses in order, and have discovered that we need to have a group of ‘experts’ to turn to for the “heavy lifting!”
Senior Care Specialists
This group of professionals (who are all MSW, LCSW, C-ASWCM, or similar) is very proficient in helping families create a plan for their aging adults. They liken themselves to the “Healthcare General Contractor” to build this needed program. They will be with the family every step of the way, from initial assessment to determining the level(s) of care needed, to implementation of the plan.
Medicare Planning and Insurance
These days there are many plans and solutions to solve the Health Insurance problem for Seniors. And, more and more rules and deadlines all the time! These experts are trained to help find the proper solution, in the correct time frame, with the correct benefits to fit the clients needs. They will fully discuss the options, educating the client and building the plan with your needs and concerns in mind.
Student Coaching Service
This service is able to help college bound students with Test Prep, Scholarships and financial aid, applications, essays, school selection, interviewing and resume writing and tutoring in specific subjects that may be needed. We work with professionals that are members of the IECA, who are held to a higher ethical standard.
Mortgage Origination Experts
These experts know their way around the mortgage business and have multiple mortgage options which helps them ‘shop’ for solutions. These folks handle both Forward and Reverse Mortgages (which are tricky, but have enabled a number of our clients to retire with dignity when used properly), as well as Lines of Credit. They are able to tackle the really tough situations, and have helped rescue some financial situations.
Attorneys and Elder Law Attorneys
These Attorneys have special practices set up in order to work through the legal maze of documents needed. Elder Law, especially, has a lot of unique problems that need to be solved in order to protect and pass a family’s estate correctly. We will help direct you!
CPAs
We are pleased to be working with a number of CPAs with varying specialties. Accounting is a huge field and we decided long ago to find CPAs with different focuses. We will direct you to a firm that fits your needs, from simple returns to complex estates.
Want to Learn More?
Let’s get together, either in person or virtually.
